Category Archives: Bridget Christie

The world’s anxieties are bleeding into her personal life, but the comedian is done with political despair. Ahead of her new tour, she explains why it’s time to bring something new to the table

In Bridget Christie’s first standup comedy routine about feminism, she appeared dressed as an ant. It was 2010. “At that time, it was really quite a hard sell, doing feminism on stage. I came on dressed as an ant, going: ‘Oh no, not another ant, going on about jam and the division of labour.’ And comics would understand what that was. But the audience were like: ‘What’s she going on about? There aren’t any ant comedians.’ And then I dropped the ant costume and went on as a woman, which was much more alienating.”

If it’s no longer a hot-button issue that there’s a woman on stage, talking, there are still frames of perception that are peculiar to women: not unlike the early days of the female novelist, say, in which their work was assumed to be autobiographical. This week, the comedian Louise Reay was sued by her ex-husband for talking publicly about their relationship. This isn’t a women’s issue, for Christie. “A lot of comedians have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about divulging. I’m quite a private person. I might talk about how I’m feeling, but I wouldn’t tell anything that wasn’t my story to tell. I’d be constantly running things past people, if I wanted to do that. I make a lot of stuff up, though. And then people will come up and go: ‘I didn’t know your son did that,’ when he didn’t.”